Digitaline

“Anticlockwise”

Review

Tick tock, you don’t stop: presenting Anticlockwise, the debut album from Digitaline,aka the Swiss duo of Gregorythme and Laps. After their debut single Rubicube,released in 2005 on Cadenza Records (Cadenza 7), Anticlockwise is the label’s first attempt towards a more comprehensive view on the creative production of the duo. Digitaline have honed their craft with extensive stage experience. Performing locally at institutions like Zürich’s Street Parade and the legendary Dachantine, and internationally at clubs like Panoramabar, Fabric, Rex and Cocoon, the pair has flipped their groovy, minimalist studio experiments into a kick-ass live show that’s as “mega” as its details are “micro.” It’s probably not surprising that Digitaline are Swiss: you don’t find timekeeping this diamondsharp anywhere else. But if their structures move like clockwork—precise configurations of smooth arcs, straight lines and right angles, like a black and white Mondrian—what they fill in around the grid is anything but rigid.
Spontaneity and flux are key. Bright harmonics shower everything in sparks, and tiny plaintive sounds plunge like diving birds. Drum tuning and delay timing are in constant motion; everything modulates everything else. These aren’t the ubiquitous clicks and glitches of minimal, but something far more inspired. Fans of Akufen and Pantytec will recognize in Digitaline a similar sense of color: dynamic, chameleonic, irisdescent. But it’s not just the sound design. Digitaline’s beats offer a sense of groove that’s frankly irresistible, a classic jacking vibe kitted out in alien tones and melodies that dance on the edge of melancholy. Informed by their live sets, Digitaline’s sense of structure balances compact, efficient rhythms and the long, sprawling arc: not so much psychedelic as narrative—narrative at its most surreal. This is epic house at its most understated: not overblown drama but a modest tale passed mouth to mouth, bar to bar.
This is fireside funk.

CADENZA14 in the media

Fact Mag (UK): “You need to listen to Digitaline’s debut album loud. Heard at low volume, or on headphones, it sounds like just another dry-heave of overly-intricate fussiness, a pointless and dispiriting display of programming virtuosity. Turn the volume up, though, and you realise that this is something else entirely. Despite the impeccably minimal sound-sources- exhaling breath, coconut-shell beats, submarine bleeps- the Swiss duo’s take on the sprawling, psychedelic side of techno is urgently physical, disarmingly forceful. Tracks on Anticlockwise all tend to follow the same pattern: the individually brittle, dainty components are gradually set into place, one by one, and then somehow, from somewhere, the track simply takes off, corkscrewing around with hyperkinetic force, as Digitaline scalpel their Perlon-esque grooves into streamlined, monumental percussive architecture. Within this pattern, though, these tracks are radically unpredictable, and therein lies their strength. Everything here is slightly off-kilter, throwing you into a breathless, constantly shifting present; the kick drums are never quite where you expect them, while screes of hi-hat come in frequently to knock the beats out of joint, and micro-edits create jump-cuts within the tracks, jolting the rhythms into new shapes. There’s not much melody, but what little there is, is all the more beautiful for being so sparingly used: the synths on ‘Supertoll’ are so unexpected and out of context that they sound poppily anthemic, and ‘Flocon Fraicheur’ is haunted by the decayed skeleton of a prog-house bassline, its fluffliness turned to grit. Digitaline’s tracks kick the sand, dust and nothingness of their ingredients up into ornate, levitating mirages, at once solid and weightless. It’s a great trick, but it’s also more than: it’s a trick that demands that you dance to it. Simon Hampson ”

Giles Smith (secretsundaze UK): “Good stuff..love the previous digitaline EP. More organic Ewok funk from the boys. so many quirky bright new sounds here.. Highlights are the slightly more functional "Astronauten" and "Rayon Vert" ”

Karotte: “gutes album. tolle tracks. cadenza halt:-)”

Matthias Tanzmann: “super! will play almost every track!”

Mike Shannon: “Great work from the Swiss duo once again! Diamond edged production skills with an induced sensibility is a killer combination. Can't wait to play this some more! ”

philip sherburne: “tons of surprises here. at first listen it seems really minimal, but it opens up over time... eight super groovy tracks with a lot of life in them. ”

Troy Pierce (Minus, Underline): “it took me a couple of listening sessions but this record is sweeeeet. super trippy, suprising, deep and fun. like taking acid in an under water playground. nice.”